


Why Can't We Be Friends?

by ProbablyVoldemort



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Doofenshmirtz and Agent P AU, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Frenemies, Gen, Hawkmoth Just Wants Friends, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 03:29:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9302261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyVoldemort/pseuds/ProbablyVoldemort
Summary: Hawkmoth just wants to be friends with Ladybug and Chat Noir.  But that's kind of hard when they send his presents back with the akumas who delivered them and refuse to invite him to their wedding.





	

**Author's Note:**

> What is this? I don't really know. It kind of came out of wondering what it would be like if Hawkmoth and Ladybug and Chat Noir's relationship was kind of like Doofenshmirtz and Agent P's and it turned into this. So yeah. I wrote it in about an hour and didn't edit it, so I'm sorry if there's any mistakes. But yeah.  
> Enjoy!

He found the brooch in a thrift store.  It wasn’t really his thing, but his little sister loved butterflies and it was only half a euro, so he thought “What the hell?” and suddenly he was the owner of a weird purple butterfly brooch.

He really didn’t know what possessed him to try it on, but then there was a weird floaty purple blob that kinda looked like a butterfly and it was telling him he had magic powers.  So that was pretty cool.

It was almost Halloween by the time he actually used it, though.  Sure, he’d tried on the costume a few times—and looked pretty badass if he did say so himself—but he’d never actually used his powers.

Until some offhanded comments from Nooroo about a ladybug and a cat Miraculous and the miracles they could perform when worn together.

It’s still a couple weeks before he tries anything, though, because what kind of superhero would he be if he didn’t have a name already picked out?  He brainstorms with Nooroo, and with an anonymous online forum.  Just calling himself Papillon sounded too lazy and not badass enough.  So did most of the generative butterfly names random online people came up with.

Eventually, he settled on Hawkmoth, and it was finally time to make his debut.

The bathroom stall was crowded, even more so when his butterflies emerged with his transformation, but it would do.  (Next on the to-do list was getting a lair, though.  All the best superheroes had lairs.)  For the first time ever, he sent out a butterfly and changed Ivan into Stoneheart.

Now to wait for the others to show.

He ended up going home and locking himself in his room—“No, Maman.  I really don’t need to come to the grocery store.  I’ll be fine here by myself.”—and transforming once again.

And there they were.  A dark haired girl with pigtails and spots, and a blond boy with cat ears.

Why had he thought they’d just listen to him and hand over their Miraculouses?  When was it ever that easy in movies or comics?

He’d kind of expected them to win, honestly.  Nooroo had mentioned their Miraculouses becoming active around the same time his had, so he really hadn’t expected them to sit around and do nothing for almost two months like he had.  So it only made sense that they’d been training in secret and would beat Stoneheart the first time.

What he hadn’t expected was Ladybug forgetting to purify the akuma.  Nooroo had mentioned it was one of her powers, that if she didn’t do it, the akuma would multiply and there would be lots of Stonehearts.

The next day, he was back in the bathroom stall when Ivan got angry again, and Stoneheart had made a comeback.

Ladybug and Chat Noir seemed ready for it, and they battled it out.  He’ll admit, maybe projecting a face of butterflies into the sky to announce his plans might have been a little bit overdramatic.  Maybe.  But, honestly, all the best superheroes were like that, so why shouldn’t he be?

They defeated Stoneheart again, and, as he watched the fight over and over in his room on the new Ladyblog, he had to admit Ladybug and Chat Noir were pretty cool.  The kind of people he wanted to be friends with.

As the days passed, it became all too clear that Paris didn’t see him as a hero.  They thought he was a villain.  Which he wasn’t.  He was just trying to help.  It didn’t really matter what they thought, though.  Ladybug and Chat Noir knew he wasn’t bad.  Their kwamis would have told them.  They were going to be friends.

Life went on.  He wore the brooch pined to the inside of his shirts—it was fairly obvious for something meant to be kept hidden—and he sent out akuma after akuma.  By the time Christmas came around, he was sure Ladybug and Chat Noir were his friends.

Which lead to a problem.

What holidays did they celebrate?

Christmas?  Hanukkah?  Kwanzaa?  Something else?  Friends got each other holiday presents.  He might not have had many friends in the past, but he had at least three now, not including the other heroes, and he knew that was a thing friends did.  But if he got the wrong holiday, they’d get offended and not want to be friends anymore.

So he saved up his allowance and babysitting money and bought them presents for every holiday he could find online.

They seemed shocked when the first akuma showed up with presents instead of a fight, and sent the presents back, with a comment on how they were probably being tracked.  (They weren’t.  Why would they even think that?)  They were less and less surprised each time after, when a new akuma would return with the rejected presents and the new ones, until, after the seventh present, Ladybug let out a sigh.

“You know,” she said, and he watched through the eyes of Flame Hands—so he wasn’t the most creative with names.  Sue him.  “You really don’t have to get us presents.”  She shared a look with Chat Noir that Hawkmoth couldn’t decipher before looking back at the akuma.  “But if you really want to, we both just celebrate Christmas.  So you don’t have to spend so much.”

He thanked her probably too many times, but he didn’t care.  They were getting somewhere.  This was a deeper level of friendship, where they’d actually learn things about each other.

Not that they’d accepted any of the presents so far, but this was progress.

He was thrilled.

Regular akumas kept coming, because he still needed their Miraculouses.  It was a game, by this point.  The more they stopped his akumas, the more he got to spend time with them.

He found a lair in late January.  It was an abandoned observatory, and his older brother helped him fix up the inside.  If he found the giant butterfly window strange, he didn’t mention it.

It was early a week or so later when he realized that he didn’t know Ladybug and Chat Noir’s birthdays.  What kind of a friend was he when he didn’t even know that?  So he did what any good friend would do—picked up a couple of birthday presents and sent off a dragon to deliver them.

(They didn’t accept them.  Not that he was surprised, but it still hurt, you know?)

The first time, it was an accident.  Kim had been rejected by Chloe on Valentine’s Day, and had just wanted her to love him—why he would want that, Hawkmoth had no idea.  But, hey, he wasn’t going to judge—so he became Cupid and had the power to make anybody fall in love with anybody else—the giant diaper Kim was wearing was really only a plus.

So it was an accident.  He hadn’t gone out trying to set up Ladybug and Chat Noir, but that was what had happened.  Ladybug got hit with an arrow, and suddenly she was all over Chat Noir.

And, well, if that wasn’t something.  Sure, they flirted during most of the fights, but he really hadn’t paid too much attention to it, but now it was something he noticed.  They defeated Cupid and purified the akuma, and he went back home to finish his homework and do research.

Because it was there.  It was everywhere.  In every video on the Ladyblog, you could see the way Chat Noir looked at Ladybug, the way his face deflated momentarily when she’d brush him off, the way her own face sometimes turned pink if something he said really got to her.

And Hawkmoth?  Well, he’d found a second goal.  Operation Get Ladybug and Chat Noir Together was officially in motion.

Alya raised questions fairly frequently about the sudden uprise of romance-themed akumas, but he didn’t really care.  They would be perfect together, and what kind of friend wouldn’t use every tool at their disposal to get their friends together?

Progress on that front was moving about as fast as his progress to actually getting their Miraculouses, and sooner rather than later their anniversary was coming up.  The first anniversary of Stoneheart.  The first anniversary of the day they became friends.

The chocolates and presents he sent were returned and joined the mountain of rejected gifts in the corner of the Butterfly Cave.

The following summer, he just about has a heart attack, because it’s right there.  Right at the top of the Ladyblog.  It’s there, and it’s not a fan video because it was taken by Alya herself.

Ladybug and Chat Noir.

On a rooftop.

Kissing.

He sends them day passes to a new spa and gives them an unofficial two week vacation in celebration of his amazing matchmaking abilities.

(They accept the passes.  At least, they don’t get the chance to refuse when he orders the akuma to just drop them off and then run.  So it’s basically the same thing.)

Five years rolls around, and he’s definitely sure they’re friends.  When he’d delivered their Christmas presents, the akuma returned—with presents for _him_.  If a purple scarf and a box of chocolates didn’t scream friends, he didn’t know what did.

A couple years later, Hawkmoth almost died when they announced their engagement.  That was literally the best news ever.  So good, in fact, that he created a secret Twitter account on a public computer to congratulate them.  His tweets trended for weeks.

But an engagement was big.  So big that the kinds of presents he’d given them in the past wouldn’t work this time.  It had to be perfect.  He couldn’t slack on this one.

He took a month to find it, without sending out any akumas, and ended up getting an identical set of dishes to the ones he and his girlfriend got the recently engaged Marinette and Adrien, though, so he figured that would be a good bet.

The fact that they refuse to invite him to their wedding hurts, though, but they announce their actual marriage sometime around when it happens, so at least he’s got an approximate date to send them anniversary presents.

Sometimes over the years, he’d be bored and create akumas just so he could talk to his friends.  For some reason, they always seemed to be surprised, but he didn’t pay that any mind.  Ladybug and Chat Noir had strange reactions sometimes.

Tonight, it was a just-to-talk akuma, but it wasn’t because he was bored.  It was because he was freaking out.  He was freaking out so badly, and not even Adrien and Ivan’s combined efforts could make him not freak out.

Ladybug and Chat Noir showed up looking like they were ready for a fight, but quickly settled down once they realized that wasn’t what this akuma was there for.

“I need help,” he all but begged, and their faces turned concerned.  He moved the akuma to look at Chat Noir.  “How did you do it?”

Chat Noir shared a look with Ladybug.  “How did I do what?”

“Propose.”  He shook his head, pacing around the Butterfly Cave.  “How did you do it without freaking out and puking on her?  Or lighting yourself on fire?  Or doing something else that makes you look like an idiot and makes her say no?”

Ladybug almost looked like she was trying not to laugh, but he must have been too stressed out to properly dissect her facial expressions because there was no way she’d be laughing at him.  She reached out and clapped a hand on Chat Noir’s shoulder.

“Well, Chaton,” she said, her voice shaking slightly.  “This seems like this is more a you thing.  I think I’ll head back home.”

She said a quick goodbye to Hawkmoth, before she was flying back off over the rooftops.

Chat Noir let out a dry chuckle, scratching at the back of his neck.  “I guess I could try to help,” he offered, and Hawkmoth let out a sigh of relief.  “It’s funny, actually.  One of my friends is having the same problem.”

He sent out another akuma a few nights later to thank Chat Noir for his advice, because it worked and she said yes.

They seemed really happy for him, but, then again, they’re his friends, so they should seem happy for him.

A few months later, he sent an akuma out to tell them that he’s really sorry but he couldn’t invite them to his wedding, and that he got it now why he couldn’t come to theirs.  Secret identities and all that.

Surprisingly, they seemed okay with it and even gave him some frying pans as a wedding gift.

A year or so later, Ladybug announced she was pregnant and that she would be taking a leave of absence.  Hawkmoth was thrilled.  Marinette was pregnant, too, so their babies would possibly go to school together.  Maybe they’d even be friends.

For nine months, the only akumas were ones that gave Chat Noir gifts and asked for updates.  He was disappointed when Chat Noir refused to even consider naming his godfather, but he really didn’t expect much by that point.  It wasn’t like you could name someone godfather when you didn’t even know his name.

Eventually, they had twins, a boy and a girl, and Hawkmoth sent them presents, even if they wouldn’t tell him their names.  Secret identities and all that.  He understood.

It was inevitable, really, that they would eventually find the Butterfly Cave.  It wasn’t like it was that inconspicuous in the first place.  It was only a couple of months after Ladybug returned from maternity leave, and they were finally meeting face to face.

The butterflies swirled around as they leapt into his lair through the butterfly window, and the three of them just stood there for long minutes.

Chat Noir was shorter in person, a good few inches shorter than Hawkmoth, and Ladybug was especially tiny.  Otherwise, they looked exactly as they always looked.

Ladybug sighed and crossed her arms, and was the first to speak.  “Why?” she asked.  “Why do you keep attacking the city?  You really don’t seem like a bad guy beyond the whole supervillain thing.”

And, honestly, that hurt.  She saw him as the supervillain?  He’d thought they were past that.

But he explained himself anyway.  How he’d found out his friend’s mother was dead and his father was an asshole, and how he’d found out that the ladybug and cat Miraculouses could bring her back and make his life better.  How it had turned out she wasn’t dead, just missing, and had shown up a few years ago out of nowhere.

He could have stopped then.  He really could have.  But they were friends by that point, him and Ladybug and Chat Noir, and they couldn’t keep being friends if he stopped sending out akumas, right?

Ladybug and Chat Noir looked kind of confused and stepped aside to talk for a few minutes.  Hawkmoth fiddled with his cane, heart racing in anticipation of what they were going to say.  This could end their friendship, really, if someone said the wrong thing.  And he really, really didn’t want that.

And then they were back in front of him, staring at him gravely.

“We can’t let you keep sending akumas to terrorize the city,” Chat Noir said, and he nodded in agreement, not bothering to correct him.  They weren’t terrorizing the city.  He was just playing his part in their game.  “So we need your Miraculous, Hawkmoth.  You can either hand it over, or we can take it by force.  But we’re not leaving here until we have it.”

Hawkmoth’s fingers reached up to play with the brooch at his neck.  “But we can still be friends?” he confirmed.  “If I give this to you, we can still be friends?”

“Yeah,” Ladybug tells him, sharing a look that seemed a little confused with Chat Noir.  “We can still be friends.”

He nodded and took a deep breath, before unpinning the Miraculous from his neck.  A purple light flashed through the Butterfly Cave, and he watched Ladybug and Chat Noir’s eyes widen in shock.

Chat Noir spoke first, choking out his name.

“Nino?”

**Author's Note:**

> Bet you didn't see that coming, huh?  
> Let me know what you though!  
> Comments are life and asks are golden!  
> Come follow me on Tumblr at probably-voldemort  
> Thanks for reading! :D


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